Times may have changed, but Tufts Professor David Guss is working to ensure that a bygone era is not forgotten.
Through a multi-faceted project and his new anthropology course, "Theaters of Community and the Social Production of Space," Guss is cooperating with Tufts students and local high schools to study the history of Somerville's theaters. Somerville, one of the earliest East Coat towns and a thriving cultural center, once boasted 14 movie theaters.
"Every kid in Somerville spent their Saturday in the theater," Guss said. "The theater created a sense of place. It was a cultural institution where people would interact, creating a vibrant social network."
Of the 14 original theaters, only half of the buildings are still standing today. Only one, the Somerville Theater in Davis Square, still operates.
Guss said that he has long been interested in how performance, art, and architecture shape the urban landscape, creating or inhibiting a sense of community, identity, and support.
His complete immersion in the history of Somerville's theaters began more recently. Guss had done some surface work on the history of theaters around his Somerville home, but his interest was sparked when he found a collection of theater photos from all over the state.
With photographs of Somerville theaters in the early 1900s in hand, Guss began to visit the sites where the old theaters had stood. Showing photographs, he would ask, "Where was this building?"
Guss received enthusiastic responses from many Somerville residents. People wanted to tell him their memories of the theater, and as they did, he realized the importance of the theater in their lives. Guss said that his project has expanded because of these interviews.
"I was invited by the Somerville Museum to do an exhibition of the photographs [and other ephemera] I had collected," he explained. "I wanted to do something more ambitious and more theoretically complex. I wanted to use them [photos, posters, interviews, etc.] to discuss the centrality of cultural institutions."
To achieve this goal, Guss has expanded his project. It now has five separate components and involves both the Tufts and Somerville communities.
When complete, "The Lost Theaters of Somerville" will manifest itself as an exhibition at the Somerville Museum, a lecture series, a book, an oral history record, and a series of current photographs of the former Somerville theater buildings and sites. Permanent archives will be created in both the museum and the Somerville Library.
Guss' course on the subject pairs off enrolled Tufts and Somerville High students to study oral histories through interviews with former theater patrons and personnel. In addition, the students will do primary research and site tours, all working toward the creation of the permanent archives on the theaters at the Somerville Library and Museum.
The course is offered with financial support from the University College of Citizenship and Public Service (UCCPS) and under the organizational leadership of Tufts post-graduate student Kathy Stanton.
The Massachusetts Foundation of the Humanities, the Somerville Arts Council, and Tufts Provost Sol Gittleman,have also given Guss a wide range of support and expressed enthusiasm for his project thus far. The project benefits those directly involved and the greater community by linking Tufts with neighboring Somerville communities through research and recollection of the past.
Guss explained that many in the Somerville community see this project, and particularly the Tufts and Somerville High students involved, as "providing a service by recording this history." He hopes that any student involved will be "enriched by the experience" and, on a larger scale, hopes to give a new slant to film scholarship.
Film is usually studied in terms of aesthetics, economics, and spectatorship. Guss wants to help people see the theaters as defining cultural centers and neighborhoods - places where people were socialized and where consensus formed.
There has already been popular support, enthusiasm, and press on his project. Tufts students enrolled in the course had their first meeting with the Somerville High students yesterday afternoon. The faculty seems enthusiastic as well.
"I give him a lot of credit for having the vision to create a course like this that encompasses so much," Drama Professor Barbara Grossman said.
